Fantastic place and fabulous capture !!!

Brings back wonderful memories of the sea freezing in Labrador. And your description reminds me of my first attempts at deep-winter photography - all the shots were over-exposed... And then I realised that the shutter was opening and closing slowly because of the temperature! Fabulous photograph, Mark. Moses would have been proud..!

HAHA! And you forgot to tell how many years ago it was, that I sent you that camera, Mark :-) Yes, and I agree with faroutsider, that Moses would have been prous. Even Methusalem would. :-D It is still so very beautiful :-) And i know you have many shots of the frozen lake, but I think you might already have posted them. :-)

Mark, let me just say that this was a marvelous winter presentation that Harry obviously inspired you to share. The lighting for this one makes it stand out, and the wintery highlights give scene a certain rugged appearance. Most of all your rant about the temperature and it's effects was what made my morning, and I kept picturing the images you described in my mind and can relate since we are roughly from the same region of the country.

Is this really Chicago, Mark? I would have guessed Siberia. When I was younger & lived in NYC, I bought an Air Force parka at an Army Navy surplus store that was rated to keep you warm at up to -50 & I used to wear it on particularly cold days while riding the Staten Island ferry, though I don't remember it getting colder than just a few degrees below zero - hard to imagine -30 (& it's also weird that the Fahrenheit & Celsius temperatures converge so closely at extreme cold temperatures - I never knew that). Also, as someone with perpetually cold hands, I can definitely relate to your issues with mittens & cameras - in cold weather, I find myself taking gloves off & on constantly when shooting. I love the play of light & shadow, light & dark in this shot & the windswept look of it & I have two minor suggestions for you. The first is to reduce the size of it to somewhere between 1000 - 1500 pixels horizontally to sharpen it & reduce the fuzziness (& for more people viewing it, enable them to see the whole image at once). The second is to crop out the water at the top & make this a pure snowscape. You may have your reasons for including it, but IMHO, I think it would improve the composition. Clearly a subjective matter of opinion, but that's my two cents worth...

The purples and oranges are amazing!

If I didn't already know that this was your lake at its winter best, 'd be grabbing my beach chair and chillin out. OMG---I have to go look for my hands!!

Fantastic capture Mark been a pleasue to drop by for a wee look as we say in scotland!!

marvelous picture

LOL, Mark! I did a doodle 'in the air' with the images that pop up in my mind, when i read you---hands and gloves in a furious dance:))--- But of course, you must take care right now ! And your lake is wonderful:) i love to see the river with these several blues embracing the ice and the water. All seems moving very slowly before my eyes. And yes, Moses would be proud, because he didn't 'ate' the manual:) I love that machine and you do wonders with her all the time, Mark! Light and shadow are fabulous and your winter dawn is spectacular. Thank you:)

Two megapixels? Surely you jest! My olde 2005 Canon had more than that….why, come to think of it, even my antique brownie had more than that. In any event, your frozen foto resembles anything but a lake…possibly .a pizza seen on edge, desert dunes after an overnight windstorm, a vast wasteland, perhaps the surface of another planet, but a lake here on earth? In any event, very well done with the colors and lighting effects, a capital pic of your cherished Lake Michigan, literally frozen solid in what may have been in an instant, but still retaining its various colors, mottled as they appear. Sorry to read of the extreme discomfort of taking photos under most undesirable and brutal conditions - harder than working in outer space - all in an effort of recording this remarkable scene, Mark. And, thanks tons for mentioned me as a prime mover in your winter odyssey.

I remember cold like that from when I lived in Minneapolis and went to work at oh-dark-hundred, walking up the street between two towering buildings through the windtunnel effect that they made. I would wrap my head up in multiple layers of scarves, over and between the layers of coats and sweaters. My face behind all those scarves would be frozen, including my nose hairs (and if you don't that's an odd feeling, let me tell you!) but the scarves of course were wet from condensation of breath, so there would be ice there too. If you make the mistake of taking in a breath through your mouth your lungs immediately turn to sheets of ice. Hands that fall off are all fine and good, but frozen lungs really are inconvenient, they don't allow any sort of oxygen transfer at all...not really compatible with life! Ahhh, the good old days...actually I do miss them quite a lot! Wonderful capture of this alien landscape (Mars? Neptune?) far far from the warmth of the sun!

I love the "mountains" in the distance. The scale of this could be anything, and my brain makes the distance much more vast than it really is. There's a line from a song (it's entitled "Chicago," actually) that says, "From the bottom of the ocean to the mountains of the moon," and that's what came to mind the minute I opened this. Marvelous, even with only 2mp! :)

First of all - this is an ever so cool (insert humour) looking image! definitely a 'Siberian Salt-mine looking Desert', or Dessert (!) could be sugar crystals instead of salt, they all glitter the same ... I love the loneliness of this lakes-cape, (something you may expect to find on the Moon?) You did well with a 2 pixel camera and so sad to read: 'your tiny hands are frozen' - just like from La Bohème: Giacomo Puccini's opera ... (it was only 'a tiny hand', but I won't argue about that tiny bit) BB Will try to send you a big jar of sunshine and heat, (not moonshine ;) - or maybe both? to melt those Icebergs in your region !

BTW - I also liked the jelly-scape (#2) and #3

It would be a bit of a challenge to click a photo with mittens 'THE SIZE OF IOWA', however you met the challenge with great results in this beautiful shot. It reminds of an alien planet with all those little mountains and shadows, and the lavender glow. Sometimes it takes braving the bitter cold to capture such unique beauty. So glad you rescued this and shared.